Cartago

Cartago was founded in 1563 by Juan Vázquez de Coronado as the first lasting Spanish settlement in Costa Rica. King Philip II granted it a coat of arms in 1565, and it remained the capital through the colonial period. In 1635, according to tradition, a small statue of the Virgin was found by a girl on the edge of town; the story says she took it home several times and each time it returned to the rock where she had found it, and in 1639 a church was built for it.

After independence, Cartago's leaders wanted the new province to join Iturbide's Mexican Empire, while San José and Alajuela backed a republic. The dispute ended in 1823, when the republican leader Gregorio José Ramírez moved the capital to San José.

Earthquakes have shaped its history. Major shocks in 1822, 1841 and 1910 severely damaged the town: the 1841 earthquake destroyed the parish church of Santiago Apóstol, and the Romanesque church begun on the same site in 1870 was abandoned for good after the 1910 quake, leaving its walls unfinished in the Plaza Mayor. The basilica was rebuilt, and the present building dates from 1939. Irazú's eruption of 1963 covered San José in ash for two years and damaged farms around Cartago, though not the city itself. The Costa Rica Institute of Technology was founded in 1971, a City Museum opened in 2010 in the old barracks, and the city is protecting a hundred blocks as a historic centre.

Faith is at the centre of Cartago's identity. The Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels is the country's principal church, and La Negrita, the small dark statue of the Virgin, is credited with healing powers; the sick come to pray for a miracle, and pilgrims touch the rock on which she is said to have been found, which is kept in the basilica. At the end of July and on 2 August, the Virgin's feast day, the Romería brings pilgrims walking from across the country, some covering the last stretch on their knees. Afterwards the statue stays in the city's cathedral until early September before returning to the basilica.

The city is also proud of its colonial past, as the first Spanish capital, and of the few colonial-era buildings that have survived its earthquakes. The ruins of Santiago Apóstol, declared a historic relic in 1982, are its best-known symbol, used today as a garden and for occasional masses. Cultural life runs through the Casa de la Ciudad, the Casa de la Cultura and the campus of the Institute of Technology.

Football follows close behind faith. Club Sport Cartaginés plays at the Fello Meza stadium, and in 2022 it won the national league for the first time in more than 80 years.

The canton of Cartago had an estimated 165,417 people in 2022, and the city at its centre is made up of the Oriental and Occidental districts. Cartago is part of the Greater Metropolitan Area, and a large share of its residents commute to work in and around San José by bus, car or train.

Those who work in the city are mostly in commerce and services, along with a small industrial park and the Institute of Technology. In the countryside around it, agriculture is the base of the economy: the slopes of Irazú grow potatoes and other vegetables, while coffee and sugar cane cover the Orosi valley.

The centre is busiest on the main market days, Thursdays and Saturdays, at the central market. Life is shaped by the calendar of the Church, above all the days around 2 August, when the city fills with pilgrims. The landscape is a reminder of risk: the city stands at the foot of Irazú, an active volcano, and has been rebuilt after more than one destructive earthquake.

Cartago's kitchen is built on the produce of the slopes above it. The slopes of Irazú grow potatoes and other vegetables, and the potato is one of the province's main crops. The province is also home to Turrialba cheese, a cow's-milk cheese from the canton of Turrialba whose origin has been protected since 2012.

Everyday meals are the national ones: gallo pinto with tortillas and natilla, a thin sour cream, in the morning, and at midday a casado of rice, beans, salad, plantain and meat, eaten at sodas and at the counters of the central market. Olla de carne, a stew of beef, cassava, potatoes, maize, plantain and chayote, is a common family dish, and tamales wrapped in banana leaf are eaten especially at Christmas.

On the roads up to Irazú and down into the Orosi valley, country restaurants serve these dishes, some with views over the valley and Lake Cachí. Coffee, grown on the valley's farms, is drunk throughout the day, often brewed through a cloth chorreador.